The Dartmouth: Why We Are All Here — Academics at Dartmouth 02/06/15

Why we are all here: academics at dartmouth

research|4

ClassDynamics|8

Liberal Arts’ Fate|10

02.06.2015

opinion asks| 20 ANTHONY CHICAIZA/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

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editors’ note

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inside this issue

NATALIE CANTAVE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

This issue began on a four-way Skype call coordinated between four time zones and three continents. Say that three times fast.

Maya was drinking wine in Paris, Sara was hiking with her family in Chile, Katie was at home Boston and Charlie was lounging in bed.

The Skype call was marred by Chile’s sporadic Internet connection, Maya’s disorderly friends and a 30-minute interruption from Charlie’s mother — despite all of this, we managed to keep our focus.

Even though we started the storyboard while on vacation, we talked about school. Academics are why we are all at Dartmouth. They are what bring students and faculty together, and connects the Dartmouth community. For this issue, we decided to explore aspects of academic life that bind students, professors and departments together.

Winter Carnival is a celebration of the Dartmouth community, and though academics may the farthest thing from your mind on this snowy weekend, we hope you enjoy this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Grade Inflation

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MALS

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Research

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Cheating

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Rankings

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Studio Art

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Professors

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Classroom Dynamics wc8 Marketing the experience

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Centerfold: fate of the liberal arts college wc10 oPinion Asks

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Miller: Unrealistic Expectations 212 ROBINSON HALL, HANOVER N.H. 03755 • (603) 646-2600

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College sees steady grade MALS program emphasizes liberal arts inflation over decades B y Haley Gordon The Dartmouth Staff

B y Kaina Chen

The Dartmouth Staff

As the workplace becomes increasingly competitive, the standard grade point average at Dartmouth has gradually risen.

According to a report published by the Committee on Instruction last winter, the average Dartmouth grade point average has increased by 11.48 percent across departments – from 3.05 to 3.40 since the 1970s.

While high ranks do look good on a resume, grade inflation comes with a trade-off: distinction. If grade point averages do not begin stabilizing, dicerning the merit between students’ transcripts will become increasingly difficult, biology professor Mark McPeek — who has studied the rising trend in the grades of Dartmouth undergraduates since 1973— said.

“Students, rightly, want to look as good as they can, but grades are also information to the students,” McPeek said. Inflated grades are not fair feedback to students, he added.

If a transcript reports all As in a variety of disciplines and classes, the transcript tells the student that he or she may excel at everything, which is inconclusive at best. Alternatively, low class medians may deter students from taking classes they have interest in, limiting intellectual exploration, McPeek said.

The College’s Organization, Regulations and Courses handbook outlines grade descriptions, but these explanations leave room for professors to excercise their own judgment.

For example, in the histor y department, individual professors have authority over student evaluation in all history class with two exceptions: the foreign study and

honors’ programs, history department chair Robert Bonner said.

Mathematics professor John Voight said that he interprets grades as a measure of a student’s mastery of a particular subject, and uses citations to indicate exceptionally high achievements.

University of Michigan professor of surgery Dr. Lisa M. Colletti conducted a 2000 study entitled “Difficulty with Negative Feedback” where she concluded that, regarding medical students’ clinical performance, “faculty members tend to inflate the performance of residents and students” and suggested that perhaps faculty are “reticent to give constructive, negative feedback, particularly in a face-to-face setting.”

While Colletti’s research proposes that professors may feel an obligation to please their students with high grades, not all faculty members agree that this pressure exists.

“I haven’t felt that I’m under pressure to raise my grades,” associate history professor Edward Miller said. He added that, although he gives a wide variety of grades to students, he has received positive feedback regarding his classes from both students and colleagues.

As a chemistry major, Brendan Wang ’15 has enrolled in classes with low median grades, yet median grades still influence his decision when enrolling for classes outside his major.

“I go for content, but median is a tiebreaker,” Wang said.

For Vivian Lee ’18, median grades don’t matter as much as her relationship with and the quality of the professor.

“I have found that I do best in a SEE GRADES PAGE WC14

Extending the undergraduate emphasis on an interdisciplinary education to graduate studies, Dar tmouth’s Master of Liberal Arts Studies graduate program focuses on the liberal arts rather than pre-professional training. The approach attracts three types of students, MALS program chair Donald Pease said: educators, experienced professionals and recent college graduates desiring a broad range of skills before acquiring a PhD. “What makes the MALS program unique is that the basis for its formation is derived from the desire of faculty for the program to bring what we call the liberal arts mentality or ethos into a graduate school environment,” Pease said.

The broad scope of the MALS degree attracted Amanda Spoto, who’s also a member of the Class of 2014, to the program.

“It’s a way for me to not only get another degree and kind of increase my horizons as an academic, but also figure out who I am, what I really do like, what I’m passionate about and how I can incorporate what I learned here into a career,” she said.

MALS student Bradley Mindich falls under, Pease’s “experienced professional” category, enrolling in the graduate program to develop an academic skill set, which he can apply to his professional work.

“This program actually allowed me to actively apply an academic filter to most of the stuff I’ve been doing, which in turn gives me a different kind of perspective on how I view not only on my businesses and what I want to do with them, but also the people I interact with,” he said.

The program gives students up to six years to complete the degree, offering part-time, full-time and summer-only enrollment options. Mindrich said he joined the program because it is flexible but offers a well-rounded education.

“The interdisciplinar y learning and study very much, in my perspective, is the way people learn these days, or should learn,” Mindich said.

The MALS program has admitted 40 to 67 percent of applicants per year in the last 10 years, Ojurongbe wrote in an email. There are currently 175 students enrolled in the program, he added.

The MALS admissions process is handled completely by Pease and Ojurongbe, who, along with a committee, independently conduct interviews, review applications and choose which students to admit to the program.

Ojurongbe earned a MALS degree while simultaneously working for the program. Like Ojurongbe, a significant number of Dartmouth employees enroll in the MALS program, making up about 10 percent

of MALS students, Ojurongbe said.

MALS offers four concentrations: globalization studies, creative writing, cultural studies and general liberal studies. Beyond these concentrations, each MALS experience is tailored and personalized.

“There’s a focus on the interdisciplinary studies, and there’s also a focus on helping each student to craft their own plan of study in the program,” Ojurongbe said.

Accepted students meet with Ojurongbe to plan their academic track before beginning class. After this initial meeting, Ojurongbe and Pease assemble a list of suggested courses for each student and recommend potential faculty advisors and research mentors.

Each student’s experience is different, Ojurongbe said, as the program is tailored to help each one individually reach his or her professional and personal goals.

MALS students can have vastly different course loads and postgraduate goals, yet they all receive the same degree, he said.

“It works. Students at the end come back and comment on how much they have enjoyed the program, how much they allowed themselves to get into the program,” Ojurongbe said. “It is a little extra work on the administrative side definitely, but it’s well worth it.”

The MALS faculty is drawn from many undergraduate and graduate departments. Professors teach for one to three years at a time. Class sizes range from 12 to 25 students per class and are taught by two professors, allowing for more personal relationships to form between students and professors. “[Professors] get to dialogue more with the students. They can SEE MALS PAGE WC14

NATALIE CANTAVE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

There are 175 students currently enrolled in the MALS program.

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Research thrives among undergraduates Campus responds to academic dishonesty B y Erin lee

The Dartmouth Staff

Each year, around 600 students participate in research through the undergraduate advising and research office, in addition to those who work through other sources on theses and independent studies.

“In science, anything wor th doing is wor th doing to mindnumbing, soul-destroying excess,” biology professor Rob McClung said. “That requires hordes of undergraduates.”

McClung studies the daily circadian rhythms that allow plants to coordinate time-dependent processes, such as seasonal flowering and photosynthesis. Loring Schaible ’17 started working in McClung’s lab on the first day of classes his freshman year.

“I started off doing lab chores, filling little pots with soil,” he said.

Schaible’s current sophomore science scholarship project involves transferring genes from Brassica plants in McClung’s lab to Arabidopsis plants to analyze the genes’ functioning, he said.

The hardest part of doing research at a liberal arts, primarily undergraduate, institution is finding students who will prioritize a research job, engineering professor Rachel Obbard wrote in an email.

Her lab studies the microstructures of ice from glaciers and ice sheets as well as brine movement in sea ice in order to assess the effects of climate change.

“Training an undergraduate requires a huge time and financial commitment,” she said. “The student is sampling all that Dartmouth has to offer and figuring out how much he or she can juggle and what his or her priorities are. Sometimes a research job falls by the wayside.”

For undergraduates looking to work with professors on research, finding someone with a similar

“vibe” is essential, Ellyn Golden ’17 said. Golden, who works in Obbard’s lab, first met Obbard while inter viewing with several professors for an internship through the Women in Science Project.

“It’s great to get interested in a project, but it’s also really important to meet people you want to work long hours of science with,” she said.

Along with WISP and sophomore science scholarships, Dartmouth undergraduates have acSEE RESEARCH PAGE WC15

DANNY KIMTHE DARTMOUTH STAFF

Gianna Guarino ’15 and Elizatbeth Bloom ”17 both do research on campus

B y James Jia

The Dartmouth Staff

Following the recent Religion 65 cheating scandal, in which 64 students were charged with honor principle violations, the topic of academic honesty resurfaced in campus discussion.

The last widespread incidence of cheating on campus occurred in 2000, when 78 students were accused, but never formally sanctioned of, cheating in an introductory computer science class when they alledgedly found solutions to a homework assignment online. The administration did not pursue the case due to the difficulty of distinguishing between those who cheated and those who did not, however this incident raised questions about what distinguishes cheating from using additional resources as well as the extent to which the College should actively root out cheaters.

Students were hesitant to make firm decisions when asked about whether students should be obliged to report their peers for academic dishonesty.

“People use the word cheating however they feel like it,” Prajan Divakar ’16 said. “If it’s not used correctly and you accidentally bring someone or something they said out of context, then you could create unnecessary conflicts.”

Margaret Carangelo ’18 echoed Divakar, saying that an individual’s response depends on the situation witnessed.

“I think there’s an obligation, but only if you’re 100 percent sure there’s cheating,” she said. “There’s lots of grey areas and if you’re not sure you shouldn’t be the one to decide.”

Aine Donovan, director of the Ethics Institute, disagrees that the honor code is ambiguous.

“I actually don’t think the honor code has any grey areas at all,” she said. “I think the grey area is how we promulgate the honor code.”

Dartmouth’s academic honor principle outlines various cases that would be considered academic dishonesty.

Among those pages is the clause “each Dartmouth student accepts the responsibility to be honorable in the student’s own academic affairs, as well as to support the Principle as it applies to others.”

While supporting the honor principle as it applies to others may seem ideal, the actual task of reporting a fellow student for suspected cheating is not appealing to most students.

The honor principle’s idealistic goals often clash with students’ unwillingness to create conflict, Carter Bartram ’18 said.

“Ideally, anyone who sees cheating would report it immediately and everything would be resolved right then,” he said.

Computer science professor Gevor Grigor yan acknowledged students’ ethical obligation to report cheating but also noted the difficulty of accusing their peers, especially when they did not see the cheating explicitly.

“If they see something that’s clearly cheating, I don’t think there’s any question that they should report it,” he said. “Where it gets murky is where you see something, and you’re not quite sure what it was. I could see in a realistic situation that could be tricky.”

Donovan said that the academic code should rely on students’ integrity rather than stringent enforcement.

“I don’t think [the honor code] should be stricter,” Donovan said.

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Faculty and students question rankings B y Lauren Budd

The Dartmouth Staff

Each year, The Dar tmouth publishes a stor y reporting the College’s ranking compared to other higher education institutions as determined by the U.S. News & World Report.

These rankings, however, are not without their critics. In 2013, The Atlantic published an op-ed entitled, “Your Annual Reminder to Ignore the U.S. News & World Repor t College Rankings,” in which popular criticisms of the ranking system were listed.

U.S. News & World Repor t constantly changes the metrics they use to compare Colleges, so short-term changes in rankings are generally not meaningful or helpful, economics professor Bruce Sacerdote said.

“A few years ago, Slate ran a piece showing that U.S. News would simply rotate the weights on dif ferent items in order to generate different rankings each year to create some excitement,” Sacerdote said. Differences in the rankings from year to year sell more stories, he added, which is ultimately the primar y goal of U.S. News & World Report.

According to The Atlantic oped, the rankings create incentives

for universities to manipulate the system, spending money to boost important ranking factors, increasing the size of their applicant pool to improve their acceptance rates and sometimes even misreporting their number to U.S. News.

“As far as I know we are not deeply in the rankings manipulation business,” Sacerdote said.

“We are in the teaching and research business.”

As for attempts to boost rankings, Nor thwestern University political science professor and author of the book “The Thinking Student’s Guide to College” Andrew Roberts said he thinks that all institutions tr y to boost their rankings, pointing specifically to generating massive applicant numbers to help appear more selective.

“I’ve heard that many places tr y to gin up applications so that they can say that they only admitted a small percentage of applicants,” Roberts said. “That doesn’t change the education they provide, but it does make applicants more nervous.”

Recruiting large applicant pools has little to do with boosting rankings and more to do with improving the quality of the College as a whole, director of media relations Diana Lawrence said.

“Our goal is not to attract more applicants for the sake of having more applicants, but to engage the students who are eager and prepared to take full advantage of the Dar tmouth experience,” Lawrence said. “Ever y year the admissions office works to enhance our recruitment efforts in order to continue to attract and enroll the most talented and diverse student population we can.”

Lawrence denied any use of strategic tactics to manipulate the College’s rankings.

Samuel Colello ’18 said that though Dartmouth’s exact ranking did not affect his decision to apply, it ser ved as a positive reinforcement for attending.

Caroline Braun ’18 said that though prestige was a factor, she chose the College over similarly ranked schools because of its resources rather than its rank.

Ronald Ehrenberg, economics professor at Cornell University and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute, echoed Roberts’ thoughts regarding rankings.

“Ever ybody’s tr ying to manipulate their rankings. It’s not particularly unique to any institution,” said Ehrenberg.

SEE RANKINGS PAGE WC16

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RANKING DARTMOUTH

4

Undergraduate Teaching

11

National Universities

9

Business School

18

Medical School

* US News Rankings KATHLEEN RAO/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

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Studio art program compares to B.F.A. Collaboration thrives among faculty B y Andrea Nease The Dartmouth Staff

Dar tmouth graduates leave Hanover with either a B.A. or B.E., both representing an education cultivated across disciplines.

This approach is advantageous for those desiring to gain experience in many fields, but some prospective students who want to specialize in ar t may have dif ficultly deciding between the liberal arts and the fine arts.

Dartmouth’s current studio art interns, former studio art majors selected to remain on campus for a post-graduate year, contend that the College’s studio art facilities, access to materials, faculty and classes are competitive with those at fine art schools. Yet in addition to these tangible resources, studio art interns Sean Hammett ’14, Sera Boeno ’14 and Julian MacMillian ’14 said that the studio art department cultivated their artistic interests into potential career paths.

“When I came here, I didn’t know I was going to study art,” MacMillan said. “I went from someone who liked art, who liked looking at art and talking about art, to someone who, well, I would consider an artist,” Hammett said he had a similar experience. Hammett began Dartmouth as an engineering major without any predilection for art.

“I didn’t do any art work in high school. I took ‘Drawing I’ freshman fall on kind of a whim,” he said. “I then went on to take sculpture and liked that even more.”

Boeno came to Dartmouth as an aspiring art histor y major, but said that Dartmouth’s studio art department persuaded her to switch.

Boeno said her relationship with ar t under went a spectr um of changes at the College.

“I grew from just doodles to politically inclined work,” she said.

In comparison to fine ar t schools, the Black Family Visual Arts Center is one of the College’s distinguishing features, MacMillan said.

“This building is unbelievable in terms of what we have and what you get as an art student here. I have been visiting a lot of graduate schools lately, and this far outpaces what a lot of graduate programs have to offer, even places like [Rhode Island School of Design] — real top-notch places,” MacMillan said.

Hammett echoed MacMillan, saying that in his current search for fine art graduate schools, he has yet to encounter any facilities superior to those at the College.

Studio art minor Diane Jang ’15 also voiced a similar opinion on the quality of Dartmouth’s art facilities.

“The [BVAC] is basically one of the most amazing buildings on campus,” Jang said. “It’s built to display art on a clean, life-size canvas, so it’s great for creativity as well as functionality since there are always inspiring works on display.”

Studio department chair Professor Soo Park said that an advantage of Dartmouth’s studio art department is the myriad of studio space.

All seniors get studio space at Dartmouth, she said, which was not the case at larger institutions where she has worked in the past.

Along with the spaciousness of Dartmouth’s facilities, art majors have an abundant access to materials and machiner y. The College

also offers funding and grants for special projects, allowing students to experiment with unavailable equipment.

For example, when Hammett was an undergraduate, he wanted to mold iron in one of his projects, but the College did not offer access to an iron pour — an essential tool for his piece. Hammett spoke with his professors about the piece and applied for a grant to obtain an iron pour. He received the grant and was able to successfully use the equipment to finish the piece of art he had envisioned.

Studio art professor Katherine Zazenski, who is primarily a sculptor but also makes digital installations, said that the college she attended as an undergraduate did not offer limitless opportunities with equipment and materials, but that sometimes this insufficiency was beneficial. “[The lack of materials and equipment] forced us as students to figure out how to make things, so inherently, we became problem solvers. If we had full facilities we wouldn’t have had to think about things in this non-traditional way,” she said. “I don’t see it as a positive or a negative though. In terms of what is available at Dartmouth, there is nothing but opportunity here.”

Students also have access to the studio art department’s faculty.

“There are world-class professors who are willing to speak to you about your work, criticize your work and help you on your way to becoming the best artist that you can be,” Hammett said.

MacMillan added that the ColSEE ARTS PAGE WC19

FAITH ROTICH/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

The Black Family Visual Arts Center provides state-of-the-art facilities to students and faculty.

B y Caroline Berens and Victoria Nelsen The Dartmouth Staff

Dartmouth’s departments, programs and minors have committed to a liberal arts education, evidenced by the many interdisciplinary programs and majors, cross-listed courses and the collaboration between faculty members. Though there is a limited supply of resources, and most department chairs would prefer to have more funding, this has not led to much competition between departments.

International studies and public policy minors, for example, bring multiple departments together, such as geography, government, sociology, economics and writing.

International studies program chair and economics professor Eric Edmonds said that the minor helps support faculty from other departments, including government, geography and comparative literature.

The minor poses an attractive model to a wide variety of majors and unites faculty from across the campus, he said.

Rockefeller Center director and economics professor Andrew Samwick said that he would not call the public policy minor “collaboration,” because that would imply that there is more teamwork across departments than actually exists, adding that the life of a professor is discipline-based while the experience of a student is multi-disciplinary.

Government department chair John Carey said that most collaboration happens within departments but that there are some topics that attract a variety of disciplines.

With these topics, Carey said that there are many opportunities for the “cross-fertilization of ideas.” He listed quantitative social science as an example.

While Samwick said that other departments on campus might experience more competition, there is virtually none between popular departments such as government and economics, despite the fact that the subjects may appeal to many of the same students.

Samwick said that interdepartmental politics might arise more in departments that do not have the same set of resources as economics and public policy.

Physics department chair Jim LaBelle said that his department does, in an abstract way, compete for resources, but added that the competition is indirect.

LaBelle said the lack in competition might be due to the College’s wealth, as most departments have the resources they need.

Asian and Middle Eastern studies chair Jonathan Smolin said that the College assigns funding to departments and programs, which is then divided among faculty based on need.

Most departments and programs

have endowments in addition to their funding from the College, Smolin said. These endowments help allot adequate funds for both programs and departments.

“We’re very grateful for gifts and endowments,” Smolin said. “We always put those to good use.”

LaBelle said that he has seen the most interaction between departments through research, and he noted that the College encourages such collaborations. Still, there is limited money to bring departments together besides outside grants.

One major grant is a 20-year-long NASA grant that is distributed to colleges in every state. The College’s physics, engineering and earth sciences departments collaborate to keep the grant going by constantly writing proposals and spending money to benefit each department equally.

The physics, math and chemistry departments used to collaborate on a course called “Integrated Math and Physical Science,” which was geared toward first years. The class required two terms but covered the material of Chemistry 5 and 6, Physics 13 and 14 and two math classes, but the class was unsuccessful. LaBelle said that one of the reasons it might have failed was due to interdepartmental conflicts that arose from varying levels of commitment from each department.

LaBelle said that indirect competition for students also exists between various science departments, highlighting the engineering department as the most active recruiter. He said that, in order for a department to expand, it is important for it to attract students, calling students “the coins of the realm.”

LaBelle said some of the departments are fairly assertive and others more complacent, but that he has not heard of the competition for students leading to any conflict.

The engineering department is constantly offering open houses, study center help and more, all of which expose students to the department, LaBelle said.

“They’ve really honed it to a fine art,” LaBelle said. “Most other departments are not nearly as advanced in chasing majors. We aspire to do more of that kind of recruiting.”

He said that the physics department has a number of programs in place to attract majors, and the topic of increasing recruitment is covered during faculty meetings.

Other recruiting methods include liquid nitrogen ice cream parties and a compilation from alumni of the physics department, which is currently being made and will include stories from past physics majors about their experience with the major and their post-graduate pursuits.

“We hope we’re competing okay SEE ADJUNCTS PAGE WC18

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Students’ identities affect classroom dyanamics B y Hannah Petrone The Dartmouth Staff

Addressing the issue of how student identity affects classroom dynamics is messy and potentially controversial, yet, the conversation is one that both students and faculty at Dartmouth seem ready to have. And yes, the first step is admitting we have a problem.

Lisa Baldez, government professor and the new director of Dartmouth’s Center for Advancement of Learning, is adamant about the need for increased communication regarding questions of how gender, race, class, sexuality and other facets of identity affect students’ classroom experiences.

“These things are very real, and they have a real impact on the classroom, and they need to be addressed as such,” Baldez said. “I think that we could do better in terms of talking about this as a faculty.”

Still, it is often unclear when students are struggling or feeling uneasy in the classroom as a result of their identity, and addressing such sensitive matters is a daunting task for professors to take on in their classes. In attempting to mitigate these tensions, there is a fine line between sensitivity and overcompensation.

Baldez said that she sees it more as a struggle between an academic ideal and a classroom reality.

“Ideally a professor would say, ‘I don’t care what your sexual orientation is. I don’t care what your race is. You are all my students, and I am going to deal with you on intellectual grounds where that is not relevant,’” she said. “Realistically, though, those differences do matter.”

They certainly matter to Emmanuel Arteaga ’17, a Mexican-American from a low-income neighborhood in San Diego, California. Arteaga was never forced to think about his race until he came to Dartmouth where, he said, he and a number of other students had multiple disconcerting moments in the classroom.

“At Dartmouth, the classrooms are predominantly white, and initially it was intimidating for me. My freshman year I encountered several incidents where people looked down on me,” he said. “I have numerous friends who are minorities that have so much to say but refuse to share because of the atmosphere in some classes.”

Arteaga’s story echoes the concerns of many students and faculty members on campus, who worry about the degree to which this discomfiture affects classroom participation and student engagement. Taking responsibility for the problem of participation in the classroom — whether it is the professor’s job to foster an environment conducive to equal involvement across all identities

or whether it is up to students to set aside their discomfort and engage in the classroom —is perhaps the biggest quandary.

The answer, of course, is not clear, but a common thread running through much of the conversation on-campus is that of shared responsibility.

Aimee Bahng, English and women and gender studies professor, said that she feels students are not only largely responsible for their own classroom experiences but also the experiences of others.

“The professor can help establish rules and guidelines and help massage the dynamics of a discussion, but there really is a tremendous amount of responsibility put on the students to practice the kind of prudent and egalitarian approaches to discussion,” Bahng said.

Still, underlying any question of identity are myriad variables, many of which are independent of the atmosphere in a classroom. One of these variables is course content.

Robert Del Mauro ’18 identifies as bisexual and said that his foreign language classes often resulted in feelings of isolation for him.

He explained that he was forced to be actively aware of his sexuality in these classes in a way that he was not in his other courses.

“Foreign language classes are taught in a very heteronormative way,”

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he said. “There is a focus on the typical family structure. We aren’t taught vocabulary for the ‘nontraditional.’”

To what extent content plays a role in the classroom is another aspect of this issue that is hard to gauge, however Del Mauro’s experiences suggest room for improvement.

Gender dynamics further illustrate the intricacy of classroom environments and expose the ways in which self-perception plays a role in class.

Nicole Hedley ’15, a computer science major, said she is, more often than not, aware of the small number of other women in her upper-level computer science classes, as well as the reticence many of them feel when faced with participating in class and engaging with

their male counterparts in group work.

While she acknowledges the struggle that women face as the minority in a traditionally male-dominated field, she does not believe that the hesitancy stems solely from classroom environment. As a teacher’s assistant in the computer science department, Hedley is deeply troubled by the tremendous level of diffidence she sees in some of the younger women she works with.

“It’s all about how you perceive your own ability,” Hedley said. “The difference I see is that men, more often than not, think they can do it and women are the opposite. They are more likely to think they can’t, and if SEE DYNAMICS PAGE WC18

Denise McWilliams is Executive Director of the New England Innocence Project. She was director of the Boston AIDS Consortium and the General Counsel for New England’s largest and oldest AIDS service organization. In 1997, McWilliams oversaw and co-authored “Until There’s A Cure,” the first comprehensive plan for delivering services to people living with HIV in New England.

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THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL 2015

Dartmouth markets itself to prospective students in a various ways B y Katie Rafter

The Dartmouth Staff

In order to market itself to prospective students each year and keep application and enrollment numbers high, the College has to appeal to and attract prospective students from around the world.

Dean of admissions and financial aid Maria Laskaris said that admissions of ficers are aware that students looking at Dar tmouth are also looking at its peer institutions, and it is impor tant to highlight the features most unique to the College.

Laskaris said that they aim to convey the dif ference between the undergraduate experience at Dar tmouth and that of its peers.

“First and foremost is the extra quality of the undergraduate experience here,” she said.

Admissions director Paul Sunde said that the College offers the resources and intellectual capital of a major research university combined with the intimacy and connection with faculty that one gets from a leading liberal arts college, and this combination provides the underlying foundation for the way he and his colleagues market the College.

The admissions depar tment has been working recently to

highlight the faculty, as of ficers believe that the quality and access to professors are impor tant factors in a prospective students’ decisions, Laskaris said.

Last summer, the admissions depar tment launched “Faculty Fridays” as a way to facilitate contact between the faculty, prospective students and their families. The initiative introduces students to professors as well as emphasizes undergraduate research opportunities with faculty.

Isabelle Kane ’18 said that she was attracted to Dar tmouth because of the focus on undergraduate education and oppor tunities for student-faculty interaction.

“I chose Dartmouth because of its reputation of having wonderful professors that take a sincere interest in their undergraduate students,” Kane said.

Virginia Ogden ‘18 said she chose Dar tmouth for similar reasons.

“The fact that we have professors, who are currently making headway in their fields, teaching us as freshman is something that you can’t find anywhere else,” Ogden said.

Laskaris also highlighted the D-plan as a unique asset, par ticularly the flexibility that the quar ter system provides.

The admissions of fice seeks to adver tise how this flexibility enables students to create academic experiences for themselves that reflect their personal interests, through foreign study programs, research or other oppor tunities.

The admissions of fice also aims to address the cost of Dar tmouth, which Laskaris said is often a key concern of prospective students. She added that the College’s commitment to meeting 100 percent of a student’s financial needs is also impor tant and emphasized to prospective students.

“We do all that we can to make Dar tmouth af fordable and accessible to students regardless of their financial background,” Laskaris said.

Laskaris said that they do not have a continuous, uniform marketing campaign, as it is a cyclical year-round process. Students are targeted depending on where they are in their college search process, Laskaris said.

The admissions of fice sends a monthly email — called a “Dmail” — to prospective students who sign up for their mailing list. The email compiles ar ticles from a variety of campus publications on topics admission of ficers believe would be of interest to prospec-

tive students and r epr esent dif ferent aspects of the College, Laskaris said.

While the admissions of fice aims to persuade students to visit campus, representatives also visit locations around the countr y to speak with prospective students.

According to their website, the admissions of fice currently employs 14 of ficers, each responsible for cer tain par ts of the world. While each U.S. state is specifically assigned to an admissions of ficer, other countries and continents are grouped together under one of ficer.

After prospective students participate in College events, they take sur veys, which is used to adjust the programs in the future, Laskaris said.

Recent sur vey data indicated that prospective students are interested in seeing residence halls, so the College implemented specialized tours this fall to include residential tours. Sur vey data also suggested that prospective students value the oppor tunity to speak with current Dar tmouth students, Laskaris said.

SEE MARKETING PAGE WC12

KATELYN JONES/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

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THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL 2015

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015

Liberal arts education provides students with skills

B y Erica Buannano and Parker Richards The Dartmouth Staff

Dartmouth University or Dartmouth College: a debate that is almost as old as the school itself.

In the early 19th century, the state of New Hampshire attempted to make the College into a state school, establishing a public institution named Dartmouth University alongside the College. This action led to the famed 1819 Dartmouth v. Woodward case in which the Supreme Court decided that the state could not unilaterally alter the College’s charter to create a public institution.

Though Dartmouth’s status as a private institution has long been settled, a firm decision on the school’s name has yet to be reached. Just last summer, the strategic planning advisory committee recommended that Dartmouth replace “College” with “University.”

The battle over the school’s name has become representative of a larger struggle for the soul of Dartmouth. The tension lies in the College’s desire to balance placing students in high-paying careers fields with ensuring its students are well-rounded individuals.

Professors, alumni and students expressed many ways in which the value of a liberal arts education is manifested.

The skills alumni acquire at the College are highly useful in the job market, economics professor Bruce Sacerdote, who was also a member of the Class of 1990, said.

“The labor market is telling us that [a Dartmouth degree] is a super valuable thing,” he said.

Beyond name recognition, Sacerdote said that Dartmouth gives its graduates problem solving skills, intellectual curiosity and the ability to interact with their communities.

Even more importantly, Dartmouth alumni — or at least those who Sacerdote has worked with — are happy, he said.

From their liberal arts education, Dartmouth students develop “both analytic and synthetic ways of thinking,” Dimitri Gerakeris ’69 said. Gerakeris is the advisor to Beta Alpha Omega fraternity and former president of both Beta Alpha Omega’s predecessor, Beta Theta Pi, and the Inter-Fraternity Council.

A major debate in higher education today revolves around the very idea of a liberal arts education.

William Deresiewicz, former English professor at Yale University who wrote the 2014 bestseller “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life” and a 2014 feature in The New Republic entitled “Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League” that was shared almost 200,000 times on Facebook, said that for the past 30 to 40 years, the predominant philosophy in American higher education has been one of technical, career-

focused education first and liberal arts education second.

“What’s changing is what we expect from education, and I think it’s changing in a bad way,” he said. “So much of this conversation is being driven by this idea that the purpose of education is to produce workers.

I reject that, and we have historically rejected that idea in this country.”

Traditionally, the main purpose of a liberal arts education was not on career advancement or technical skills, but on the development of the “autonomous self,” a thoughtful, wellrounded person, Deresiewicz said.

He classified America’s leadership class as “excellent sheep — they’re narrowly technocratic, loyal only to their own ambition, they have no vision, they’re intellectually undernourished, they’re risk-averse and they’re doing a terrible job,” he said.

While the fundamental basis of the liberal arts — humanities, social sciences and physical sciences — are not any less valuable today, the focus of educating for a career is seriously harming America’s business, intellectual and civic leadership, he said.

Deresiewicz’s call to return to liberal arts education is based upon the premise that those who study the liberal arts are more well-rounded than their peers in career-track schools.

“Liberal arts are fields were knowledge is pursued for its own sake,” Deresiewicz added.

For instance, Deresiewicz criticized economics majors who are more focused on securing a career than in studying what has been dubbed “the dismal science” for the sake of learning.

“Strictly speaking, economics is a liberal art, but the way in which students approach it when they major in it, they do it because they think it’s going to get them a job,” he said.

While not all students may be attracted to economics for its return on investment, the major has been the most popular degree for the past several years, according to the Dartmouth’s fact book. In general, the number of mathematics, economics and engineering majors — all disciplines with high perceived employability rates — have risen, indicating a slight but noticeable change in student direction over the past few years. The number of students majoring in computer science from 2010-2013 averaged 22.

However, this number dramatically increased to 51 in the Class of 2014.

PayScale — a web-based company that aggregates information about salaries — ranked Dartmouth 44th on its list of colleges with the highest alumni salaries. Dartmouth graduates reported an average early career salary of $55,500, and an average mid-career salary of $104,700, according to PayScale. Dartmouth’s ranking was 25th when technical schools, engineering schools and military schools were removed.

PayScale also indexes colleges based upon their “return on invest-

JESSICA AVITABILE/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

ment,” which is calculated by subtracting a college’s net price ­— the cost of attendance minus financial aid received — from the average amount graduates can expect to earn above what they would have earned had they not attended that institution.

Dartmouth ranked ninth overall on the list when financial aid is taken into account and was third amongst liberal arts-based institutions, behind Stanford University and Princeton University.

Students have mixed opinions on the tension between the benefits of pre-professional and interdisciplinary education.

“I personally emphasized being well-rounded in high school, but I’m now realizing that to get a job these days you need depth and not breadth,” Abigail Chen ’17 said. “So really [a liberal arts education] may not be the most important thing.”

Student body president Casey Dennis ‘15 said that he believes that

the College can improve its graduates’ pre-professional skill set, but such education should occur outside the classroom.

“I would say there are steps that Dartmouth can take to offer more practical skill, but I think there’s an opportunity for this to be added extracurricularly,” Dennis said. “I think that the skills that a liberal arts degree offers does pay off in jobs, and I think it’s amazing that we have the opportunity to explore so many different courses.”

The skills that a liberal arts degree offers will help students after graduation, Dennis added. He said that he thinks it is important that students have the opportunity to study different disciplines rather than taking a “laundry list” of classes for a particular major.

Student Assembly vice president Frank Cunningham ’16 said that the current societal progress being made throughout the United States

emphasizes the importance of a liberal arts education.

“I think it’s something a lot of students play down, however it teaches you to think, break down a problem and figure out what is really happening here,” he said. “Once you go into a specific program, you’re so focused and narrow, and that is not what these four years are supposed to do.”

Cunningham added that because of the quarter system, students have the ability to switch from different types of classes while maintaining a liberal arts thought process, which is similar to what graduates will experience in their career fields.

Yerin Yang ’17, an international student from South Korea, said Dartmouth’s emphasis on the liberal arts drew her to the College as she would have been forced to choose a major straight out of high school in Korea.

“I really felt like I didn’t learn a lot

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applicable beyond professional pursuits of things I was potentially interested in during high school, like psychology and ecology,” she said. Yang added that some of the Dartmouth classes she took at “random” were some of her favorites, and would not have been offered at a Korean University.

Colombian exchange student Juan Torres ’17 said that he appreciates that the College’s liberal arts focus because it allows him more freedom in deciding classes. In Colombia, he would have received a “map of courses” that every student would have to take each semester.

A liberal arts education is essential to creating graduates who are conversant with different cultures and backgrounds, Har vard Law School director Robert Bardone ’94 wrote in an email.

Bardone said that the liberal arts education is critical. As technology increasingly connects the world, leaders must have broad educations which expose them to the many disciplines, he added.

Cornell University lecturer Melissa Grout Smith ’87 echoed Bardone in saying that to become truly well educated, people need to have the ability to think critically across disciplines, not just about their own specialty.

At Dartmouth, Grout-Smith said that she was exposed to “bigger ideas” and given confidence from professors outside her primary area of study to “expand her horizons.”

Smith discourages her children from attending undergraduate research universities because it’s important to learn more than just technical training, she said.

Dean of the Faculty Michael Matsanduno said that a liberal arts education is integral. No one can accurately predict the exact skills they will need during the course of their life, he said, and the wellroundedness of the liberal arts education prepares individuals for the real world.

Matsanduno added that new technologies and developments provoke necessary changes in traditional liberal arts education, but the mission — and core — of that education remains largely the same.

Mary Aselton Budd, who was a member of the Class of 1991, said that the College prepares students to be versatile and nimble, valuable skills which will help students pave their way in the world.

“It’s not a job training program, per se,” she said. “[Dartmouth] prepares kids to succeed in life.”

Aside from the academic emphasis on the liberal arts, other aspects of the College contribute to the utility of a Dartmouth degree.

Cer tain par ts of the D-Plan prepare us for relationships in the real world more than the semester system, Prodhi Manisha ’17 wrote in an email.

Manisha wrote that after college, people usually don’t exist in the same physical sphere, and maintaining

relationships requires effort and commitment.

Manisha added that the D-Plan reflects this aspect of the realworld accurately, whereas with the semester system, people usually stay in close proximity for all four years. Relationships hardly ever get to acquire the ability to function across physical distances until after graduation, they wrote.

Gerakeris said that the College’s “very open type of Greek system” contributes to the development of its students.

Greek life, he said, can help students develop management and interpersonal skills outside the classroom and can promote intellectual growth in ways that might not otherwise be possible.

Gerakeris warned, however, against a culture of binge drinking that can harm intellectual development.

“If you’re playing pong four nights a week, you’re not getting out of Dartmouth what it has to offer — there’s just no way,” he said.

Additionally, Gerakeris said that the utility of a Dartmouth education is also individualized.

“That’s the way life is: you have to prioritize and decide what’s most important to you,” he said. “So I don’t think there are two people who have ever had the same Dartmouth experience.”

Bordone wrote that the College’s small population allowed him to realize the importance of making an impact in his community.

Because the amount of students enrolled is relatively small, individual initiative and action matter on campus, he wrote. He added that he thinks if students bring this realization into the real world, they can become profound agents of change in their own lives, as well as the lives of their friends and family.

Mastanduro said the College’s liberal arts focus is important, and that the enduring quality of the Dartmouth education is its ability to prepare generation after generation of people to be leaders in various fields.

Cunningham emphasized that while communities may have a “whole host of issues,” members share the experience of trying to improve them.

“You still are connected by that one thing that you and everyone has shared and that’s the fact that we all live in Hanover, New Hampshire and we all go to this amazing school,” he said.

Jessica Tong ’17 also said that the inter-connectedness of the study body is a significant part of the Dartmouth experience.

“I know that the Dartmouth experience also allows us to share the same emotions,” Tong said. “We share the childish fun of a midnight snowball fight and we share the same pain when we first taste the reality of binge drinking, sexual assault and emotional stress.”

SAMUEL HEATH/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

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THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL 2015

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015

Marketing focuses on displaying student life FROM MARKETING PAGE WC9

Sunde said that the admissions of fice’s marketing strategy changes constantly, not only as Dar tmouth evolves, but also as new technology develops and the interests of prospective students and their families change.

He cited the of fice’s new communications and social media position as an example of their increased social media presence.

The admissions of fice also manages a blog and Facebook group for accepted students, as well as having developed an Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Flickr and Youtube.

Alumni often play a role in reaching out to prospective students . They both inter view and host receptions for prospective students in their areas, district enr ollment dir ector Howar d Morse ’81 said.

Though there is no common message that alumni are told to project during inter views, they often emphasize the College’s focus on undergraduate education, Morse added.

The admissions of fice also aims to convince accepted students to commit to Dar tmouth by hosting the Dimensions program,weekends in the spring when admitted students come to campus to meet current students and learn about the College.

During the main Dimensions weekend, a group of freshmen and sophomore students put on a show for the prospective students. The Dimensions show aims to showcase cer tain aspects of student life, such as the social scene at Dar tmouth and the ways in which it dif fers from its depiction in the media, said Rosie Mahoney ’17, co-leader of this year’s Dimensions crew.

“The main thing we focus on is why we chose Dar tmouth,” Sam Glick ’17, the other trips co-leader, said.

The Dimensions program also provides prospective students the chance to meet each other in an informal space, Mahoney said.

While they are not told how to market the College by the admissions of fice, Mahoney said that administrators do provide advice on how to handle questions about certain topics, such as sexual assault and the “Freedom Budget” — a student-authored list of demands aiming to prompt administrative action that was emailed out to campus last winter.

Last spring, the Dimensions program changed to of fer three dates for prospective students to visit campus instead of one and ended the tradition of enrolled students posing as prospective students. This latter change was

implemented to curb unauthentic interactions between prospective students and current students, Laskaris said.

Outside of Dimensions, the College devotes significant resources to recr uit potential athletes.

The College markets itself to prospective athletes by emphasizing the focus on undergraduate education, the competitive Division I athletic program, the DPlan, the alumni network and the Dar tmouth Peak Per formance initiative — a program aimed at helping athletes excel on the field as well as academically and personally — to prospective athletes, deputy athletics director Rober t Ceplikas wrote in an email.

Vir tual tours, the magazine “Peak” and direct communication between coaches and athletes are various ways in which Dar tmouth’s athletic program is marketed, Ceplikas wrote. He added, however, that cur rent student-athletes are the most ef fective salespeople when they host athletic prospects on their campus visits.

Faizan Kanji ’15, this year’s Inter national Student Mentor program coordinator, said that he believes that Dar tmouth’s small community and need-blind admissions for international students are two impor tant factors that prospective students from other countries should consider. There are only five other U.S. higher learning institutions that are need blind for international students: Amherst College, Har vard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and Yale University.

Kanji, who is originally from Pakistan but spent his last two years of high school in the United Kingdom, said he decided to apply to Dar tmouth after meeting an admissions representative who visited his high school.

“The person who came was ver y friendly and spoke individually to ever yone who was interested,” Kanji said. “I think that was really helpful.”

Kanji added that the College can improve its recr uiting for international students by increasing its worldwide presence.

“Because Dar tmouth is a smaller school many people haven’t heard about it and so they don’t apply,” Kanji said.

In all aspects of the admissions marketing process, communication between prospective students, current students, alumni and faculty is seen to be of extreme impor tance.

“I think any time that we are connecting prospective students with Dar tmouth students we are succeeding,” Sunde said.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015

THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL 2015

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THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL 2015

Employers split on grade inflation said. “We want a true reflection of that student’s capabilities and feel class when the professor is good, the interview process is a better no matter how interested I am in way to evaluate.”

At Hypertherm, the hiring prothe class,” Lee said.

While some professors said that cess not only focuses on knowledge think they should award all good and skill, but also on “soft skills,” work, others said that they believe such as the ability to plan goals, self-awareit’s important to ness and indistinguish betegrity, she tween the work of “I have found that added. students. Wheth- I do best in a class “ W e er those distincjust don’t tions are purpose- when the professor is know — fully drawn or fall good, no matter how from one naturally depends interested I am in the s c h o o l t o on the class. another “I do feel that class,” — what it in general we have takes to get a ver y talented that grade,” student body at Dwyer said.

Dartmouth,” Mill- -V����� L�� ’18 “It’s hard to er said. “However, use that one within the classes number as a I teach, there is a significant variation in perfor- method for evaluation for someone’s ability to apply information they mance.”

Employers value students’ grade learned in college.”

Ted Schroeder, senior analyst at point averages to varying degrees.

“Ninety percent of our hiring healthcare consulting firm CBPartmanagers don’t even care about ners, views grade point average as GPA, because what you did at col- an important factor when evaluating lege is not necessarily just about candidates, along with a student’s the grade,” Sarah Dwyer, talent major, college, experience, personacquisition leader for Hypertherm, a ality and fit. He also addressed the Hanover-based company that manu- issue of grade inflation in assessing factures plasma cutting machinery, the real significance of a grade point FROM GRADES PAGE WC3

average.

“Regarding grade inflation — that’s something that we’re aware of, but it’s not something we consider to be a major factor, because inflation or deflation varies across schools and we’re pretty much always evaluating candidates from across institutions,” Schroeder said.

McPeek said that faculty members are never taught how to “give grades.” This is a source of the grade inflation problem, he added, proposing that each department publish the distribution of their grades online.

Full knowledge of grades could be used to adjust grade point average expectations based on departments, he said.

Grade inflation is a difficulty not only found at Dartmouth. Other schools have attempted to combat rising grades in various ways.

From fall 2004 to spring 2014, Princeton University restricted the percentage of As rewarded in undergraduate courses to no more than 35 percent. Princeton revoked this policy prior to the fall 2014 semester.

In December 2013, the median grade at Harvard University was reported at an A minus. This became a common practical joke, and a website called “What would my Harvard grade be?” that featured only a giant red “A” in the center of the page was created.

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015

MALS students leave feeling accomplished FROM MALS PAGE WC3

have some really good interactions,” Ojurongbe said. “They like the idea that the students in the program come from all walks of life and various disciplines.”

Students enrolled in the MALS program also have the chance to take upper-level undergraduate courses and classes in the other graduate programs. Student often take classes at Tuck Business School, Ojurongbe said.

MALS student Amani Liggett said that while the small class sizes surprised her after attending a larger public university as an undergraduate, she appreciates the

interactions between professors, advisors and students.

All MALS concentrations require a thesis in order to graduate.

According to the MALS website, students have the freedom to choose to write thesis papers, produce creative work or work alongside faculty to plan out a project reflecting their individual field of study.

“Our students feel that those culminating research projects really give them a sense that they have not only completed their degrees but also given themselves a sense of accomplishment that only a thesis, or a production of a play or a book of poems can give you,” Pease said.

Faculty and students value mutual trust FROM CHEATING PAGE WC4

“I think the issue at hand is that we need to be able to educate students.

When you come into my class, I have full expectation that you are a person of integrity.”

Michael Smith ’18 emphasized the importance of trust, saying that he respects when professors walk out of the room when he takes a test.

Similarly, Brian Li ’17 said that he thinks the honor code should remain based on student’s integrity rather than stringent rules.

“I think that Dartmouth values privacy and trust,” he said. “If they were to crack down, it would seem kind of tyrannical to follow kids to the bathrooms or to make sure you have a TA on every single row and aisle to make sure that no one’s cheating.”

Divakar said that administrators’ main focus should be on preventing students from resorting to cheating.

“The people who want to cheat will always find a way to cheat. The people who don’t want to and want to actually learn will always find a way to learn,” he said. “I think it’s the people in the middle that we’re concerned about.

We can stop them from making poor decisions.”

Donovan said that there is a positive effect than came out of the recent cheating scandal.

“If there’s anything good to come out of this, it’s that faculty and students are talking about the issue,” she said.

“We’re trying to figure out how to do more in a very engaging way with students where we can talk about some of these principles and what it means to be part of this community.”

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015

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THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL 2015

Research brings together students and professors FROM RESEARCH PAGE WC4

cess to research opportunities with faculty through senior fellowships, Presidential Scholars and the new First Year Research in Engineering program. Students also find oppor tunities independently at Dar tmouth’s graduate schools and at local facilities such as the Dar tmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Organizations like the undergraduate research and advising office, the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, the Dickey Center and Neukom Scholars offer grants and funding to students who work individually with faculty members.

Gianna Guarino ’15 has worked in Obbard’s lab for one year, after taking Obbard’s engineering 008 course and later becoming a teaching assistant for the class. Guarino, a geography major, wanted to participate in scientific research and delve into a highly specific area of science, rather than receive a broad over view through an introductor y course.

“My focus is definitely not in science,” Guarino said. “I really wanted to do something that would push me out of my comfort zone and give me exposure to the world of science without necessarily doing it the conventional way and taking a class in it.”

Opportunities for undergraduates to do one-on-one research are readily available through programs and independent action, Guarino said.

“I’ve never met a professor who doesn’t want to help get undergraduates involved,” she said.

Undergraduates who want to do research, however, need to be prepared to invest a significant amount of time, she added.

Elizabeth Bloom ’18 is working for engineering professor Mar y Albert through a WISP internship,

which requires participants to commit six to 10 hours of their week to research, she said. Albert is looking at the structures of ice cores from polar ice sheets to determine the effects of climate change.

Physics and astronomy professor Barrett Rogers said that another challenge of conducting research at Dar tmouth is that faculty generally work alone, as opposed to bigger research universities where faculty work in teams on similar projects.

“When you’re working with other people, really positive things can happen — it’s like a synergism,” Rogers said. “Doing research here is more isolated.

That is the downside of working at a smaller place — ­ it can be harder to compete.”

Faculty also need to manage their time to balance teaching and research, which can be difficult, but the two often inform one another, astronomy professor Ryan Hickox said. In the upper-level classes he teaches, his students complete term projects that involve reading current astronomical literature and expanding on the studies they find.

“Some of the things they work on have actually informed our thinking on some of the research we’re doing,” he said. Hickox focuses on black holes and quasars —regions at the center of galaxies that radiate vast amounts of energy and radiation due to a supermassive black hole — ­ and how these objects relate to the evolution of galaxies and stars.

Engineering professor Jane Hill said that the amount of time that she spends on teaching versus the amount of time she spends on research differs depending on which terms she has classes.

“When I teach, the balance for research becomes more of a maintenance, a little bit of push-

ing things out beyond what is expected,” she said.

Even when she is not teaching, making progress on new ideas and writing grant proposals consume a significant amount of time, Hill said. Her lab, which employs seven undergraduate students, works on methods to detect pathogens and biomarkers to diagnose infectious diseases.

“I’ve usually thought about an

idea for a year or two,” she said.

“It may have been a kernel of an idea [but] I may not have spent a lot of time on it, and once we reach a critical mass of knowledge, then it can make sense to introduce a new project.”

Future work is guided by new questions that arise from projects in progress and how these questions can be solved with the available resources, Hickox said.

“When you finish one project, it always raises more questions than you actually answer,” he said.

The progressive, dynamic nature of the work is what drew McClung to scientific research, he said.

“You can follow your curiosity,” he said. “Research — ­ that’s what enables you to do it — you’re a student for your whole life, so it’s truly lifelong learning.”

NATALIE CANTAVE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Students balances academics with research on a daily basis at the College.

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THE DARTMOUTH WINTER CARNIVAL 2015

Students vary in sentiments towards rankings

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015

Ehrenberg said that though all institutions, including Dartmouth, Ehrenberg pointed to admis- are actively working to improve sion strategies like recr uiting their rankings and be the most selarge numbers of applicants and lective they can be, their academic enrolling students with lower test mission is not suffering as a result. scores in the second semester or He also noted that being a liberal as transfer students so that their arts school does not detract from public perception of the College test scores do not affect rank.

Higher rankings are beneficial or any institution that identifies as to colleges all around, Ehrenberg such, as applicants as a whole are said, noting that higher rankings aware of the differences between schools. attract more ap Ehrenplicants, which “I already knew it was berg also said makes the colthat small unilege look more a good school, but it’s versities such selective. Alnice to be able to point as Dartmouth lows the college and Princeton to gain more at the ranking and say University, or students with “liberal ar ts the highest test exactly how good it is.” universities,” scores and even have a relative allows the coladvantage in lege to spend -Samuel Colello ’18 the rankings less financial game — their aid money on small size and students. Conlack of techniversely, when cal colleges rankings drop, allow their avcolleges attract fewer applicants, enroll applicants with lower test erage standardized test scores to scores, and end up having to of- be higher, another key component fer more money in financial aid to of US News and World Report rankings. draw students to enroll, he said.

“The analogy that I like to use is “The goal of being the best you that selective private universities can on ever y level is what makes are like Cookie Monster. Cookie American higher education so Monster only has one goal in life, extraordinarily good,” Ehrenberg and that’s to find as many cookies said. as he can and stuff them in his Sacerdote suggested a more mouth. Selective universities are accurate way to rank schools very similar: we only have one goal would be to compare whether in life and that’s to be the ver y incoming students choose a parbest we can on ever y dimension ticular institution over another in in our activities,” Ehrenberg said. a “head-to-head” match.

“We want the best students, the “This yields a stable, sensible best faculty, the best facilities, the set of rankings and Dartmouth best student ser vices, you name does extremely well using a it. That’s what makes a selective sensible methodology like this,” Sacerdote said. universityDartmouthAd.pdf selective.”

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